Raids hamper Palestinian reconciliation: Hamas

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian efforts to heal a rift between rival Palestinian factions are being hampered by West Bank raids launched by Western-backed security forces against Hamas targets, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said on Tuesday.

Damascus-based Meshaal spoke on his first visit to Cairo for many months after Egyptian officials met leaders from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group, which launched last week's raids. Nine people were killed in ensuing violence in the West Bank city of Qalqilya.

The raids, whose casualties included members of both factions, had stoked fears of a wider showdown and highlighted tensions within Palestinian society over Abbas's efforts to rein in militants under a long-stalled U.S.-backed peace "road map."

"We will pursue our policy in cooperating with the Egyptian efforts to reach a real reconciliation but the most difficult obstacle hampering reaching a Palestinian reconciliation is what is happening in the West Bank," Meshaal told reporters.

"What is happening in the West Bank cannot be accepted," he said after talks with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman.

"This obstacle must be resolved in order to create an atmosphere that would allow achieving a reconciliation," Meshaal said after talks at the Cairo-based Arab League.

Meshaal said Hamas and Egyptian officials discussed some steps to be taken in order to resolve the crisis such as freeing Hamas political detainees and ending the security crackdown.

Egyptian officials met on Sunday with Ahmed Qurei, who leads Fatah negotiators in Cairo-sponsored reconciliation talks, to find ways to sustain talks and end clashes, arrests and counter-arrests by forces loyal to Fatah and Hamas.

"Egypt and Arab countries believed the Palestinian internal division has to end in order to get a stronger U.S. involvement in the peacemaking with Israel," a Palestinian official close to the talks told Reuters earlier.

Several rounds of talks between Fatah and Hamas ended inconclusively, with major differences remaining.

Fatah accused Hamas security forces in the Gaza Strip of detaining dozens of its supporters in recent days. Fatah spokesman in the West Bank, Fahmi Al-Zarir, said 150 of his group's supporters were detained by Hamas on Saturday.

Egyptian mediators stepped up pressure on the groups to form a unity government by setting a July 7 deadline to bridge divisions. That would prepare the ground for a gradual restoration of unity and allow holding presidential and parliamentary election in January 2010.

"So far Egypt is still trying to prevent the collapse of its efforts. A collapse would only harm the Palestinian people and serve Israel," the Palestinian official, asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell began a new push to facilitate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on Tuesday, opening talks with regional leaders.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi)